Executive Order re: Immigration Ban

[Nihil Obstat]

8 minutes ago, Amppax said:

Yeah, take a look at this: https://thejosias.com/about/

and this: https://thejosias.com/2016/10/17/integralism-in-three-sentences/

Apparently I have a new bookmark.

[Amppax]

Just now, Nihil Obstat said:

Apparently I have a new bookmark.

Yes. I'd also suggest Pater Edmund Waldstein's blog: https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com

[Ice_nine]

yeah I guess since I didn't read the whole executive order (how many pages is it? Is it worth my time reading? Genuine questions) I guess I'm left with soundbytes and snippets and the media's reaction.

It's a complicated issue, and I'm hesitant to invest a lot of time and energy into national matters because I'm not deluded enough to think my opinion will have any real bearing on the actual policies and practices that result.

I'm just always reminded of the good samaritan. His decision to help someone in need was incredibly risky on his part. It could have been a scam. He could have been killed, robbed, or gravely injured himself. I guess you can build walls, shoot anyone you don't know who comes too close, and theoretically you and yours would be safe. That's obviously to extreme. Where do we strike the balance as individuals and as a sovereign nation to balance my/our safety and the call of the gospel to radically renounce our own lives to do the will of God?

I was also thinking. People don't want refugees coming over here en masse largely because there might be some among them who wish to do us harm. It would be safer for us to just say no to all or most. But I was really thinking about this and about abortion after watching a documentary (12th and Delaware, if anyone has seen it and wants to discuss it). You know all of these babies we're fighting to protect, if they grow up unwanted, unloved, poor, and (for the racistly inclined) black they may very well be a threat to us. They may easily turn to crime? Most aborted children are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In a lot of ways it would be safer for us and our middle-class happy families to allow them to be aborted. There's even been some evidence to show that abortion is linked to lower crime rates.

But of course that's wrong, and unchristian in every sense. And there are differences between the immigration question and the abortion question, but I was struck powerfully by this parallel. I would hope some of you consider it.

[Anomaly]

The Good Samaritan put they guy up in a hotel, he didn't bring him home.  

The Executive Order is three pages including NPR comments.  

You cure medical problems by treating symptoms, curing the disease, then preventing future infection.  It takes a well rounded and thorough approach. 

The temporary ban is a symptom level resolution.  It doesn't cure the disease.   Cynically I'm concerned that we won't have a good cure and prevention plan because we get worn out arguing the other stuff.  We SHOULD spend adequate resources for timely and effective vetting if we are bringing them into our home.  If we're putting them up in a "hotel", we need to help provide help for meals and a doctor as the Samaritan did.

We don't need to leave them injured in the street while we are distracted with a moral arguement if we can/should bring the victims into our home or "hotel".

[polskieserce]

The United States has no business taking in any refugees.  There are millions of marginalized people within our own borders who desperately need help, but have been neglected for generations.  Whenever someone says that we need to take in refugees for humanitarian purposes, it makes my blood boil.  We need to take care of the people we already have, and frankly the US is doing a lousy job of it.  I originally made this list in a response to Socrates when we were debating capitalism.  I added another 2-3 points  that came to mind

1. People with severe mental and neurological disabilities, many of whom will require expensive mental health services and/or lifelong institutionalization
2. People with physical disabilities who can live at home but require assistance doing basic tasks
3. People who are working a lot of hours but for very low wages and can't pay for their cost of living
4. People with very expensive chronic medical conditions
5. People who graduate from college but can't find decent paying work (keep in mind that most people can't do engineering)
6. Children with dysfunctional parents (ie, mentally ill, addicted to drugs, abusive, etc) who end up in foster care
7. People who are suffering from drug addiction themselves
8. People with serious criminal convictions who are trying to turn their life around but have basically been locked out of the economy
9. Families displaced from their homes due to natural disasters
10. People who have been working in 1 industry for years and then lose their jobs due to outsourcing/automation/decline of that industry/etc
11. People with legal problems who can't afford a proper lawyer
12. Elderly people with no family who can't take care of themselves
13. People living in dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhoods
14. Those impacted by pollution from nearby industrial facilities

 

Before any of you start talking about how there is already help for the groups listed above, I will reply by saying you are full of it.  As I've mentioned in many other threads on this forum before, the welfare system in the US is terribly inadequate and marginalized people are left to fend for themselves in many cases (I know from personal experience).  It should be no surprise that Americans are resistant to letting more people into our country, regardless if they are from Mexico, some other central American country, Syria, or and other 3rd world nation.

[Peace]

1 hour ago, polskieserce said:

The United States has no business taking in any refugees.  There are millions of marginalized people within our own borders who desperately need help, but have been neglected for generations.  Whenever someone says that we need to take in refugees for humanitarian purposes, it makes my blood boil.  We need to take care of the people we already have, and frankly the US is doing a lousy job of it.  I originally made this list in a response to Socrates when we were debating capitalism.  I added another 2-3 points  that came to mind

1. People with severe mental and neurological disabilities, many of whom will require expensive mental health services and/or lifelong institutionalization
2. People with physical disabilities who can live at home but require assistance doing basic tasks
3. People who are working a lot of hours but for very low wages and can't pay for their cost of living
4. People with very expensive chronic medical conditions
5. People who graduate from college but can't find decent paying work (keep in mind that most people can't do engineering)
6. Children with dysfunctional parents (ie, mentally ill, addicted to drugs, abusive, etc) who end up in foster care
7. People who are suffering from drug addiction themselves
8. People with serious criminal convictions who are trying to turn their life around but have basically been locked out of the economy
9. Families displaced from their homes due to natural disasters
10. People who have been working in 1 industry for years and then lose their jobs due to outsourcing/automation/decline of that industry/etc
11. People with legal problems who can't afford a proper lawyer
12. Elderly people with no family who can't take care of themselves
13. People living in dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhoods
14. Those impacted by pollution from nearby industrial facilities

 

Before any of you start talking about how there is already help for the groups listed above, I will reply by saying you are full of it.  As I've mentioned in many other threads on this forum before, the welfare system in the US is terribly inadequate and marginalized people are left to fend for themselves in many cases (I know from personal experience).  It should be no surprise that Americans are resistant to letting more people into our country, regardless if they are from Mexico, some other central American country, Syria, or and other 3rd world nation.

Well since it is apparently acceptable to use the non-completion of a first aim to justify the complete forbearance of pursuing a second aim, I propose that we do nothing to help any of the people listed among your 14 points until we have first completely solved the problem of stopping the million abortions that occur in the USA each year.

Do you see how unproductive that type of reasoning is?

[polskieserce]

1 hour ago, Peace said:

Well since it is apparently acceptable to use the non-completion of a first aim to justify the complete forbearance of pursuing a second aim, I propose that we do nothing to help any of the people listed among your 14 points until we have first completely solved the problem of stopping the million abortions that occur in the USA each year.

Do you see how unproductive that type of reasoning is?

There is such a thing as having too many bricks in the oven you know.  If a college freshman decides to major in engineering, he will have to take calculus 1.  If he takes calc 1 and fails, under no circumstances is it a good idea to go on to calc 2 without first retaking and getting a decent grade in calc 1.  There are 3 reasons why you are wrong:

1. The US government's first and foremost duty is to look after it's own citizens, not foreigners.  There are plenty of native-born Americans who have been royally screwed and left behind.  That pool of people will only grow as more and more of them get displaced from the economy (outsourcing and automation).  In the coming years, we will have to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations about how we are going to provide for people who can't care for themselves.
2. There are limited resources.  The US can't keep taking in people every time something goes down in the 3rd world.  The US has been playing Superman for too long.  We focus on all of the world's problems except for the ones within our own borders.  Either that will change or America will not be a very nice place to live 40 years from now.
3. There are many reasons why abortions take place.  Part of the problem, as I've tried to drill home many times before on this forum, is the utter lack of help and resources for people in bad situations.  If a woman was left by her partner, has a low paying part time job, and doesn't have a steady place to live, do you really think she will have a positive outlook on life?  Of course not.  She may get very desperate and do something that she could not have imagined herself doing (abortion, turning to drugs, etc).  Abortion is one consequence of an inadequate welfare state.

Nothing you say is going to convince me to take in migrants.  At the end of the day when you put ideologies and emotions aside, America has little to gain and a lot to lose by letting more foreigners.

Edited February 10, 2017 by polskieserce

[Peace]

6 minutes ago, polskieserce said:

Nothing you say is going to convince me to take in migrants. 

Thank you for being so candid. In that case, I will not waste my time.

6 minutes ago, polskieserce said:

At the end of the day when you put ideologies and emotions aside, America has little to gain and a lot to lose by letting more foreigners.

Nope.

[Anomaly]

37 minutes ago, polskieserce said:

Nothing you say is going to convince me to take in migrants.  At the end of the day when you put ideologies and emotions aside, America has little to gain and a lot to lose by letting more foreigners.

Thank you for making me look like the Charitable Christian.   

[polskieserce]

8 hours ago, Peace said:

Thank you for being so candid. In that case, I will not waste my time.

Nope.

Let's take a look at why it would be highly unwise to take in more people...

On 1/27/2017 at 5:38 PM, Peace said:

Yeah I struggle with giving. I give, but I know I could be giving more. I definitely don't "give till it hurts" and I feel guilty about that sometimes. I still have an attachment to material things to a certain extent that I wish I did not have.

When the issue of income inequality comes up, it doesn't come up because some parents can't afford to buy their kids the latest video games.  It comes up because people don't have adequate access to health care, parents of disabled children don't receive proper services, people accused of crimes don't have access to quality legal help, minority youth are so alienated from society that they simply give up and join a gang, children in foster care get bounced around from home to home, mothers would rather have their unborn children cut up into pieces instead of bringing them into the world, etc.  There are deep divisions in American society and those chasms are slowly getting bigger.  In Europe, refugees who didn't get into the UK or Germany have been bitterly disappointment by their life prospects.  Letting in more foreigners, without some major economic improvement, would be seen by too many people as abandonment of the poor.  That could prove to be disastrous, especially given how divided America already is.

[Norseman82]

Considering Brandon Saad was one of my favorite Blackhawks (when he was on the team), and his family comes from Syria, I was wondering what his take on it would be.  Here is an interesting article on what his father, a Syrian immigrant, thinks: 

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/penguins/2017/02/03/columbus-blue-jacks-brandon-saad-dad-syria-donald-trump-muslim-ban-immigration/stories/201702030127